An industrial unit had been converted into a commercial scale cannabis factory complete with a bedroom and freshly-stocked fridge.
Police smashed through the doors of unit on the Telford Road industrial estate in Bicester on October 21.
Inside, they found ‘gardener’ Petref Resuli, seven rooms given over to growing more than 900 cannabis plants, a side room containing a toilet, shower, bed and washing machine, as well as a kitchen with a TV and fridge ‘stocked with fresh produce’.
On Friday, Oxford Crown Court heard that police officers on the dawn raid had come face to face with foil-backed insulation panels when they entered the unit in Bicester Business Park.
A PC Turner, whose statement was read by prosecutor Jonathan Stone, said: “Initially it looked as if there was no access but then I noticed a small panel that appeared to have been cut through.
“After a few kicks on the board we could access through, and I could see a white male stood at the end of the corridor about 10m away.”
The factory contained 910 cannabis plants growing among dangling wiring. Mr Stone told the court: “It’s a professional set up; professional in terms of criminality but not professional in terms of safety, if I can put it that way.”
The man officers found inside the industrial-scale cannabis farm was 44-year-old Petref Resuli.
An Albanian national, he arrived in the UK illegally in June 2021.
In his interview with police officers after the raid, he claimed he was sleeping rough on the streets when a man approached him and said he could help find him somewhere to sleep.
He took him to the industrial unit where he was arrested. “I had nowhere to go and he told me he could find me a job. I asked him about the plants but he said it was none of my business,” he said.
Resuli claimed he’d played no part in looking after the cannabis plants. But he later abandoned that position, admitting in a basis of plea that his role was to tend to the plants as a gardener.
The defendant, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to producing a class B drug.
Judge Ian Pringle QC jailed him for 15 months. It is expected he will be deported after serving his sentence.
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